Legal MBAyhem

Rusticating, Part II

2010-07-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

As I posted a few weeks ago, this has been a summer full of "rustic" activities: gardening, picking fresh local fruit, visiting the Charlottesville City Market, canning, etc. Two weekends ago, I decided to try my hand at yet another activity that has me thinking that maybe I was actually raised on a farm and just don't remember: cheese making. For whatever reason, I suddenly just had a burning desire to make cheese with my own two little hands. Yes, I know, I am a freak of nature. So, I did some digging around on the internet and found instructions/recipes for both ricotta cheese and mozzarella that seemed relatively straightforward.

I started with the ricotta cheese, which seemed fairly foolproof, even for a cheese-making novice like me. Basically, you throw milk (which I buy in glass bottles, 1950's style, from a local dairy that supplies Charlottesville Krogers), vinegar and some yogurt into a pot and heat it until it curdles, then you dump the whole thing into a strainer lined with cheese cloth and about half an hour later, ta-da, you have ricotta cheese!

Ricotta cheese starting to form curds (in my very poorly lit kitchen)

Ricotta cheese straining in cheesecloth-lined collander

Finished ricotta in a container!

Making ricotta was so easy that I felt motivated to try making mozzarella, which requires some slightly more exotic ingredients and a little bit more time and effort. You need a good candy thermometer (or something else that reads temps under 100 degrees F well), twice as much milk, rennet, citric acid, and salt. I have never in my life had to purchase rennet before, but fortunately Rebecca's Natural Foods in the Barracks Road Shopping Center carries rennet, citric acid, and cheesecloth. There are varying "recipes" on the internet, but basically, you heat the milk to around 88 degrees, add the rennet (dissolved in some water), add the citric acid, heat to around 105 degrees, and then scoop out balls of cheese curds and squeeze the whey from them with your hands. You then place the balls of cheese into the microwave (this is the faster way...if you are particularly industrious, you can dip them back into the whey until they soften) for a few seconds, remove them, squeeze out the whey, knead, and repeat until the mozzarella reaches the texture you want. You add salt at the second kneading (I am kind of anti-salt, especially since I'm working for a company focused on hypertension and salt sensitivity this summer, but you can't make mozzarella without salt. Seriously.). I think I over-kneaded a bit....probably one too many rounds of kneading, because once I had refrigerated the cheese, it came out more like mozzarella that you could grate and put on a pizza than soft "fresh" mozzarella that you would turn into mozzarella caprese. But that didn't stop me from making a nice caprese with some local tomatoes (only my cherry and grape tomatoes are ripe) and home-grown basil!

Essential ingredients - vegetable rennet and citric acid

Just getting started....

Some nice preliminary curdling action around 88-90 degrees F

The first ball o' cheese

Mozzarella balls, pre-microwaving and pre-kneading

Finished mozzarella balls, ready to go into the fridge

A nice fresh caprese salad platter!

After my cheesemaking, I decided to make some braided Italian herb bread (I like to pack a lot into one day, OK?), and then I packed up the whole lot to take over to Brianne's, where she was cooking up some very tasty pasta with veggies. We enjoyed the food and then topped off the evening for a trip to Splendora's for gelato. Tasty, local/homemade, Italian food - what more can a girl want?

That is a good-looking homemade bread if I say so myself

I took a few days off after The Great Cheesemaking of 2010, and then my parents came into town for the weekend. On Saturday, we grabbed breakfast at Albemarle Baking Company, picked up sandwiches to go at Bellair Market, hit up three wineries (Barboursville, Prince Michel, and Sweely Estate), and topped off the day with dinner at The Bavarian Chef (totally worth the drive, but don't go on the hottest day of the year - their poor little A/C just couldn't keep up!). Sunday, we did breakfast at a little place down the street from my apartment and then went peach-picking at Chiles Peach Orchard and blackberry-picking at Hill Top Berry Farm (they also have a winery/mead-ery) before the parents hit the road and left me to my own devices. Naturally, once they left, the hot water canner came out again and I started canning up a storm. In two evenings, I made peach salsa, peach pie filling, peach melba jam, blackberries in framboise, blackberry syrup, blackberry apple chutney, blackberries preserved in water (for use in baking recipes later in the year...blackberry cobbler in February? Yes, please!), and maple walnut syrup (because I could...).

Mmmmm....tasty canned goods!

This is what my coat closet looks like now...anyone need some canned goods?

And that, in a nutshell, is Rustication, Part II.

Best of luck to all the Bar exam-takers!

2010-07-27T17:08:00.000-04:00

Today is the first day of the bar exam in many jurisdictions, and since I know I have a couple loyal readers who are taking their exams this week, I just wanted to give them and everyone else suffering through the process a shout-out. You've all studied hard, and you'll do just fine - you only need to pass! If that doesn't make you feel better, just remember that I'll be in your shoes in just three years, and by that point, I'll be suffering and miserable and you'll be a fairly well-compensated third-year associate. See? It's all about perspective.

For those of you (possibly MBA students?) who think the bar exam is no big deal.....go away, and I never want to speak to you again.

For anyone who's looking for something entertaining, check out this hypothetical bar exam-type question from Above The Law. It's funny whether or not you have any idea how you'd answer the questions.

If this whole JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I could always become a scullery maid

2010-07-27T16:58:00.000-04:00

From medieval times until the early twentieth century, the scullery maid was basically the lowest of the lowely household/kitchen servants, responsible for washing pots and everyday dishes, scrubbing floors, boiling water, and performing other such unsavory tasks as plucking chickens. The position is one that has (fortunately, I think) generally gone the way of the horse and buggy, but somehow I recently managed to find work as a scullery maid.

The Scullery Maid (L'Ecureuse)
Jean-Simèon Chardin (French, 1699 -1779)
From http://www.corcoran.com/

Yes, that's right - a Brown University diploma, a year of the MBA program at Darden, and impending matriculation into a Top 10 law school has landed me a position as a scullery maid. Well, technically, the position is "Assistant." And it's actually kind of fun. A few months ago, the Wine & Cuisine Club (WACC....B-school humor at its finest - hahaha! ) at Darden took a cooking class through the Charlottesville Cooking School, which also hires folks to fulfill the scullery maid function in exchange for either pay or free classes. So for a couple nights in the past month, I've donned an apron and some gloves for 4+ hours after putting in my time at the internship. While there is a LOT of dishwashing (particularly for the sauteeing class), I also get to listen to most of the class, and the assistant/scullery maid always gets fed part of the meal that the class cooks, too. All in all, it's been a pretty neat experience (for dishwashing), since I learned some new knife techniques and recipes, and I'm looking forward to signing up to take some classes myself - I earned them, after all!

Now, I signed up for the scullery maid job at CCS, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. What I didn't expect was that my summer internship would also necessitate serving as combination sous chef/scullery maid last week! The local biotech start-up that I'm working for this summer hosted its first Advisory Board meeting last week, which was kicked off by a dinner at the CEO (who is technically my client/boss)'s house. His wife was out of town until right before the dinner, and he needed some help pulling everything off, so I showed up a couple hours in advance to chop and dice and make crabcakes, and I ended up serving as combination cater waiter/scullery maid in addition to "guest" and "company representative" during the dinner. I'm guessing a good number of MBA students would have been displeased with that arrangement, but I enjoy cooking, and my mission this summer was to be as helpful as possible, and that's what the company needed at the time....so I did it, and my help was appreciated. Like I said....if this JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I'm going to buy a nicer apron and hire myself out. Anyone else need a scullery maid? Will work for food...

LO and recruiting...from a legal perspective

2010-07-20T19:39:00.000-04:00

Apparently, today is the day of posting links rather than posting real posts. But I stumbled across this article on emotional intelligence and legal recruiting and thought it was worth a read whether you're a law student, a business student, or both. Dontcha just love it when LO* sneaks its way into law school?

*For the uninitiated, LO stands for "Leading Organizations," or a core course in the First Year at Darden - it's basically all about interacting with and/or managing people within an enterprise.**

**Dear LO faculty, please don't hate me for that super-condensed description of LO.

Who gets a JD/MBA anyway?

2010-07-20T12:44:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled across a Wikipedia list of "famous" (I use the term somewhat loosely) JD/MBAs from a variety of top schools. Sadly, UVa is not listed, but if anyone is looking for some information about JD/MBA career paths, check it out!

The countdown to the first day of my second first year

2010-07-16T08:00:00.002-04:00

Today marks the “one month from the start of law school orientation” point. Eeek! I honestly probably should have been more freaked out about starting Darden last year than I am now about starting law school, but oddly I wasn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Darden does a MUCH better job communicating with matriculating students and letting you know what you need to get done before school starts (I can say this objectively. I've lived here in Charlottesville for almost a year now and have done all the "Charlottesville things" one needs to do when one gets here. I've even done most of the "UVa things." But I'm generally clueless about most of the "law things" I need to or should be doing. I don't think I'm alone on this. At Darden, we got a checklist in May, and even though it stressed me out, at least I knew what I needed to be doing.) Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that the incoming Darden students started moving to Charlottesville earlier and organized social events so that we’d know each other before classes start. Or maybe it was because even though Darden is the bootcamp of business schools, law school in general still has a much nastier reputation than b-school. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t played softball since the days of The College Firm’s lawyer-league play. Who really knows why, but I’m apprehensive in a way (a “nervous gym tummy” kind of way) that I wasn’t last year.

I suppose that it isn’t really the nature of the work or the workload that makes me nervous. I’ve worked in political and legal environments since I was 16, and frankly, the parts of my summer job that I’ve enjoyed the most this year have been the corporate governance and legal-ish parts (though I’ve been very clear with everyone that I CANNOT provide legal advice under any circumstances). So it’s not the work or the reading of legal cases that is making me apprehensive; I periodically still track down pleadings for random cases to read them for fun. Nor is the issue the workload. I’ll be taking fewer classes, spending less time in class, and taking fewer exams over a longer period of time. I’ll also be able to do my studying on my own time, rather than on Darden-dictated time (which means the return of AFTERNOON NAPS!!!! So exciting.). I know it will be challenging, but that’s exciting to me, not nerve-racking.

I frankly think that part of my apprehension has to do with - *gasp* - the people (I know, I know…. I am SURE that I will be lambasted or burnt in effigy or something for saying this, but I’m trying to be honest.). When I visited Darden when I was applying to schools (18 months ago at this point), I loved the Darden people I met. They were friendly, they were welcoming, and I just seemed to “click” with the people I met. That whole “fit” thing they talk about in admissions was completely on the mark for me. I just “fit” better at Darden than I did anywhere else I had applied or been accepted, and a huge part of that “fit” was the people (the other part was that Darden was - of all the b-schools to which I was accepted - the place where I felt I could do my "best work" in the words of Dean Bruner). Last year, as I was preparing to start at Darden, I wasn’t at all worried about the “people” component of the experience (the finance component, yes…the people component, no). Now, I am by no means the world’s most outgoing person, and there are certainly people at Darden with whom I don’t hang out regularly, but I can honestly say that by and large, I really like my Darden classmates. The vast majority of Darden students are intelligent, motivated, and fun to be around. I’ll bet this is true at UVa Law, too, but I frankly didn’t get the same vibe and perfect “fit” feel from the law school either when I visited several years ago or when I went to the Admitted Student Weekends this year. Oh, I liked it and the people well enough, and I definitely didn’t get any stronger “fit” vibes from any other law school, but it just doesn’t feel the same. And if I have to put my finger on it, I would say that part of the issue is really age.

Now, before somebody starts accusing me of being hypocritically ageist, hear me out. The average incoming age of Darden students is 27-28. I was on the very young side of my class at 23 (I turned 24 a month later, and I will reiterate again, I worked full-time every summer and winter through college at the same law firm, and I worked at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named for a full 30 months after graduating). But I’ve always been younger than my classmates (even in grade school – a September birthday will get you!), and because I graduated early and spent a lot of time at the office, most of my friends are at least a couple years older than me. Given my work experiences and the friends that I have, I often feel older than 24. The vast majority of Darden students have had careers of some sort prior to returning to school. This means that they have (usually) lived independently, travelled for business, bemoaned the lack of summer vacation in the “real world,” tracked their 401-K performance, and balanced the demands of work and the “rest of life.” There’s a perspective that comes from having been out in the working world for a while, and I think there’s also a perspective that comes from having survived the first year at Darden, frankly.

The average incoming age at UVa Law is 24 (at least for the class of 2012, the most recent class for which data is easily available). Yes, that’s the average and I’m right at it (though I’ll be 25 shortly after starting). That means that the average UVa Law student at graduation is still younger than the average incoming Darden student. It also means that 50% of my class is younger than me. This is a first for me. It means that the peer advisors assigned to my class – who are 2Ls and 3Ls – are younger than me. It means that many people (about 40% of the class of 2012) have gone straight through from undergrad and haven’t worked or lived on their own. It means that, amazing though I am sure these future classmates will be, right now I very much feel like we are different points in our lives. And I feel like a grandma. This grandma-like feelings started at the Admitted Student Days this spring, when I hosted several admitted students (I have a guest room that might as well get some use) and attended the standard barbecue and other scheduled programming and found myself talking to people who were barely 21 and still seniors in college. I felt truly ancient. Fortunately, the second student I hosted is coming to UVa and will be joining me in the “grandma club.” Also, I suppose that many of the "older" people joining the class of 2013 may have been stuck at work and didn't make it to the Admitted Student weekends. So I know I will have elderly brethren....but I haven't found many of them yet.

It’s also comforting to know, as I get more apprehensive as the start of school draws nearer, that all my Darden friends are just a (very) short walk away from the law school. And they have the added attraction of being in a building with free coffee. And of having no idea whatsoever what the Blue Book is. You all better be prepared to drag me out of the law library, ply me with grown-up cocktails, and make fun of me for being a young’un next year!

I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box

2010-07-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, as I was electronically signing yet another master promissory note (Um...hi...doesn't "master" mean that I should only have to sign one? I signed four last year.) for student loans and petitioning to have my student budget adjusted so that I can pay for all my healthcare costs (I have diabetes. I take care of myself, but doing so is darn expensive....bye-bye savings!), I thought to myself, "Wow, my 1L classmates and I are getting ready to take on nearly $70,000 of loans for a 9-month period." Holy moly. And that doesn't include paying for things like car insurance. Or travel. Or anything fun.

Tuition alone at UVa Law is $47,500 for incoming out-of-state students (don't even get me started on the fact that I have lived in VA and exclusively in VA for a year, filed a tax return here, pay personal property taxes here, have a VA license and car registration, and certainly don't even pretend to reside anywhere else). Yes, it's even more at Darden ($49,500). That means that I'm basically paying more for tuition each year than the total cost of yearly attendance at my undergrad college, Brown University (and it was cheaper when I was there, obviously). Yes, ostensibly (and hopefully) I'll have a nice, lucrative job when I graduate, but if you look at the costs of a JD/MBA, the base debt load amounts to $280,000 (not including capitalized interest or a discount rate or any of that other financial ridiculousness from which I'm taking a break this year). Just an MBA will set you back $140,000, and a getting a JD alone can easily generate up $210,000 in student debt. Eeeek! You could buy a decent-sized house around here for that. I am dreading - absolutely dreading - the day that the Powers That Be tell me what my monthly student loan payment will be. Let's just say that most people have cheaper mortgage payments each month. I'm going to start planning the interior decorating scheme for my cardboard box. And to think that I tease my sister about her future of living in a tent (she's applying to Ph.D. programs in archaeology). Tents are far more spacious than boxes, and somebody will basically PAY HER to go to grad school. Sigh.

Clearly, I'm not the only one who has been thinking about the high costs of professional education. For more on the subject of law school tuition, check out Above the Law and this recent US News & World Report article. My advice to potential professional school applicants: Think long and hard about whether or not you think the costs of going back to school - and of attending top schools - is really going to be worth it to you before you spend time and money applying. I do think it will be worth it for me in the long run...but that doesn't mean I can't grumble about the costs. After all, I wouldn't be an MBA student if I didn't worry about dollar signs followed by big numbers...

Rusticating

2010-07-13T09:37:00.000-04:00

Let me be clear: I am not typically an overly outdoorsy, tree-hugging sort of person (I did hug a tree once, but I went to Brown, so it was basically required before they let you graduate). When and if I ever own a house, I plan to hire someone to take care of the yard, because yard work really isn't my thing (and my neighbors would end up stoning me because the place would become an eyesore very quickly). I think the local food movement is great, but I also like to eat raspberries in January. However, all those disclaimers aside, I have spent much of the last couple months going all "crunchy granola" and becoming domestically inclined in a thoroughly "old school" sort of way. Maybe it's just the relative abundance of free time that the summer has afforded me, or maybe it's a result of living in the "country" (or maybe it's both...), but I've been rusticating to an extent that has started to frighten even me.

It started innocently enough, I suppose. When my parents and sister came down to visit for Easter (yep, I cooked Easter dinner this year), my father brought with him some tiny little mint plantings for me. Mojitos are one of my favorie summer time drinks, and I maintain that you shouldn't be permitted to live in Virginia if you don't have all the makings of a mint julep on hand at any time, so this seemed like a good idea. Plus, I already knew that I'd be spending my summer in the Charlottesville area rather than abandoning my apartment for the summer like many of my classmates with exciting jobs in exotic locales, so that meant I'd be around to water plants and all that stuff. Well, the mint seemed to start me down a slippery slope. I decided that if I had mint, I might as well have basil (for homemade pesto, another my summer favorites) and other herbs, too. And while I was making the trip to Lowe's for window boxes and potting mix and seedlings, I might as well buy one of those nifty little upside down tomato growing pot thingamajigs, too, right? Right.

Three months later, I have realized that there is either some sort of plant equivalent of steroids in the water here, or I actually may have a wee little bit of a green thumb. Who knew? The herbs are out of control, I've had to repot the tomatoes because they over-grew their original hanging pots and became slightly suicidal (one of the two pots spontaneously plunged two stories to its almost-demise), and I decided to diversify into peppers, too.

Yep, I'm basically running a garden/mini-farm off of my little apartment porch. My tomatoes have been very tasty...

...and I've been trying very hard to be patient while this guy ripens (but I am not naturally a patient person):

I've really been enjoying having fresh herbs for the aforementioned summer cocktails and pesto and other tasty treats, and I also bought an ice cream maker and made fresh homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (and strawberry frozen yogurt with fresh-picked strawberries). I brought the tasty frozen products to a BBQ a friend hosted, and they got rave reviews. Yay!

In addition to my sudden urge to become a gentlewoman farmer (inspired by our man Thomas Jefferson, but minus the whole land-owning part) and purveyor of frozen delights, I developed an almost unhealthy obsession with the ancient art of canning. By canning, I mean preserving various tasty foods in glass jars, of course! I don't exactly know what inspired my desire to take up this new hobby, but it *may* have been related to my childhood love of going to pick fresh fruit. Picking (and eating) locally grown fruit with my own two grubby little hands has always been a summer-time ritual in my family. Now that I live alone in a climate and location that again permits me to partake in said activity (Rhode Island and Massachusetts were great for apple picking, but not much else), I needed a way to ensure that the fruits of my labors (literally and figuratively) didn't go to waste. Because really, in my mind it's not worth it to drive out to the middle of nowhere to spend time picking fruit if you're only going to pick what you can eat in the next day or two. Plus, homemade jams and jellies are both tastier and healthier than the ones you can buy at the store. And I like to cook and bake, so canning seemed the next logical step in my own personal domestic diva development project.

So I invested in a boiling water canner ($20 at the local Wal-Mart) and all the little necessary gadgets like jar lifters and lid lifters and canning funnels. Oh, and the jars (which a friend of mine had to special order in Massachusetts but which are sold in grocery stores and WalMart here in more sizes and shapes than you might imagine). I purchased so many jars at Wal-Mart that the cashier closest to the door by the housewares section and I were on a first-name basis. For my first attempt, I chose strawberry jam. It went so well (and tasted so good), that naturally I had to go cherry picking and make things with the cherries, so I made preserved cherries in almond syrup (delicious spooned over homemade vanilla bean ice cream) and cherry raspberry compote. And then, because I was feeling pretty good about my mad canning skillz at this point, I made bread and butter pickles. Yes, I did this all within the first week of owning a canner. I may or may not be slightly obsessive about new hobbies (and again, I don't have homework, so what's stopping me?)

The results of my first week of canning: jam, compote, preserves, and pickles

Week 2 of my new addiction - er, hobby - conveniently coincided with the start of peach season and raspberry season, and Week 3 marked my first trip to the Charlottesville City Market (the big Saturday farmer's market downtown). During these weeks, my canning repertoire expanded to include dill pickle slices, Oktoberfest beer mustard (no seasonal ingredients involved, but who cares?), golden relish, raspberry jam, chocolate raspberry sauce, peach salsa, berry wine jelly, and blueberry chutney. Brianne even came over for a canning "lesson" (I use the term very loosely) when I made the chutney.

From left to right: (front "row") Oktoberfest beer mustard, berry wine jelly, golden relish, blueberry chutney, peach salsa; (back "row") chocolate raspberry sauce, raspberry jam

Once I had made all of these tasty treats, I had to figure out where to store them. I already keep a fairly well-stocked pantry (no real surprise there), and since most people don't have a root cellar these days (you should store glass jars of fruits and vegetables in cool, dark places so that the light doesn't lead to discoloration), I had to clean out the shelf in my coat closet in order to hold lots and lots of jars. I also put together a gigantic basket of homemade treats as a gift for Father's Day (my mother hates sugary sweet things like jams and jellies, so she got a jar of bread and butter pickles and Dad got everything else). Everyone else should be forewarned that I will be gifting canned goods from now and until eternity...

My last domestic rustication effort of the summer (so far) has included making all sorts of side dishes and tasty morsels for barbecues and picnics and whatnot in town. One of my friends threw a surprise b-day barbecue for his girlfriend, and I offered to make the cake (this same friend once challenged me to a bake-off...after two months of talking smack, he finally forfeited after the aforementioned b-day barbecue). Since I was feeling particularly ambitious, I actually decided to make a round layer cake AND to hand write the birthday wishes; I usually cop out and make a sheet cake, frost it in the pan, and buy "Happy Birthday" candles. My focus is taste, not appearance. But I think that this one looked pretty good (and certainly tasted good - red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting....mmmmmm), if I may say so myself:

I've been taking some time off from rusticating due to travel plans for the last three weekends, and I've been spending several of my evenings doing fun exciting things like organizing my case materials, ironing, and all that other stuff that you can do inside in the air conditioning (it was one of the hottest Junes on record in Charlottesville). Since I'm in town again this weekend for the first time in a while, and I hear that it's blackberry season, I'm thinking I might need to bust out the canning materials again...

My inner neat freak

2010-07-09T15:57:00.000-04:00

Since school ended two months ago, I've basically been ignoring the gigantic stack of cases and tech notes and review decks and exams and various other school-related junk that has been cluttering up my bookshelf. Yesterday, I decided that unless I did something about said junk, I was going to have to go buy another bookshelf to hold my law school stuff this year....and Ikea ain't close. So, it was time to clean.

Here's the starting point:

I had been pretty good about taking everything out of the binders and reusing the binders each quarter up until Q4. But I'd also been just throwing exams and review decks and goodness knows what into a big pile. Plus, seriously, that's like 3 feet (OK, OK, maybe only 2 feet) of rubber-banded paper just flopping all over the place! It was becoming seriously offensive to my Type-A over-organized everything-has-its-place-darnit personality. Now, I know I could have just opted for electronic cases in the first place, but I will probably never be able to build an accurate spreadsheet using case data while I'm flipping back and forth between two windows on my laptop. And I'm not going to lie - hard copy cases are a great crutch when you get cold-called. Nothing says "I'm super prepared" more than flipping like a maniac through a case and muttering "I know I saw that in here somewhere....uh......"

I decided that I really only needed to keep technical notes and review decks from this year. The cases were interesting, but I don't necessarily see myself sitting somewhere thinking, "Hmmm...I thought there was some really interesting information in that George's Tshirts case about predicting the likelihood of rain at rock concerts. I wish I still had that case!" I do see myself (possibly) thinking, "I wish I had that tech note on calculating inventory re-order points."

So two hours, four francy schmancy binders, and a couple packs of dividers later, I had this much "trash" to be hauled to Darden and recycled:

...and a bookshelf that looks like this (bottom shelf is all empty binders and notebooks to be used next year in law school):

Ahhh.....so much better!

Yup, I know I'm a freak. But that's Ms. Neat Freak to you.

The Riviera

2010-07-02T15:56:00.002-04:00

or those of you who know me, you know that a I drive what is officially an "old man" car - a 1995 Buick Riviera that was, in fact, previously owned by an old man (my grandfather). I refer to it the same way Pop always referred to it, as "The Riviera" (not to be confused with the Pop-dubbed "The Park Avenue" or "The Lucerne," his other recent Buick models; my old Subaru Legacy aka "The Subaru;" or my mom's minivan, which my grandparents still call "The Truck"). Since I'm so used to driving The Riviera, it was odd for me to start talking about how I was going to visit The Real Riviera: the French Riviera.

During my trip to Cannes (see the post here for details of GBE Cannes 2010), several of my friends and I took day trips to explore other Rivieria attractions beyond the annual Film Festival. Those trips included taking a ferry to the Ile St. Honorat, which is one of two (along with Ile Ste. Marguerite) cute little islands about a 20-minute board ride from Cannes. We took the bus from Cannes la Bocca, walked down the pier, bought our tickets, and voila! We were ready to sail!

After a 20 minute ferry ride on which we saw "pirate ships"...

...and fancy carbon-masted racing sail boats...

...we made it to St. Honorat, which is the site of the Abbey des Lerins, an actual abbey inhabited by monks. You're supposed to be quiet on the island, so we took a lovely peaceful walk around the place. We saw their fancy vineyards (they do make their own wines and liquors, available for sale in the abbey gift shop)...

....and we saw some cute little chapels on the shoreline....

...we found a little pirate cove...

...and a big fort that looked straight out of Robin Hood...

...and then we visited the actual abbey before grabbing lunch and heading home....

It was a lovely day!

The next day, the same group of lovely ladies decided to take the train from Cannes to Monaco. We did our own tour of basically the whole principality, starting with the beautiful church outside the train station...

...then we walked up the hill to the royal palace....

...saw the royal guard....

...and some other beautiful scenery and gorgeous parks in Monaco Ville.

Then we trekked down the mountain, hopped on a bus, and went to see the Montecarlo casino before heading back to Cannes.

And thus ended my trip to the Riviera. Now all I have is some photos...and the Buick.

Cannes GBE, or what should have been the greatest-ever course credit coup

2010-07-02T14:58:00.003-04:00

View of Cannes from the fort at the top of the hill

At the beginning of May, two days after exams ended and one day after I jaunted up to Hartford for my cousin's wedding (lovely, lovely but completely gratuitous-to-this-post pic below - it was a beautiful and very fun wedding!), I hopped on a plane to Nice, France to attend the 63rd Festival de Cannes (i.e., the Cannes Film Festival). For two weeks, I was supposed to hob-nob with entertainment insiders and walk the red carpet...all while earning the equivalent credit for a one-quarter Darden class. This sounds like the best plan ever (a veritable academic coup, if you will), right?

Um...wrong! While there were certainly parts of the trip that I enjoyed, I spent much of the two week period completely frustrated and counting the days until I got to fly home. Now, before you stop reading here and write this off as a crazy rant by a grumpy person, let me say this: what follows below is a fairly "fair and balanced" (no, not in the Fox News kind of way....in a truly "fair and balanced" kind of way) summary of the trip. I'll cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in the spirit of being entirely honest. What follows is my opinion, yes, so you can feel free to wholly disregard it, but there's also a lot that I'll say below that I really, really wish someone had told me before I signed up for this trip. Some of my Cannes-mates may have different views (Sierra's more up-beat accounts are here and here and here), but the following is mine (and you'll note that I've taken six weeks to write this post, in part because I was so irritated before that I didn't think I could provide any sort of objective report on the whole thing until now. I've mellowed with time. Honest.).

So...in the style of my Barcelona GBE post, here goes...

Overview
1.) Course name: The Business of Film at the Cannes Film Festival
2.) Professor: Yael Grushka-Cockayne, a member of the Decision Analysis faculty (she did not attend the Festival with us but will be reading our papers, viewing our presentations, and giving us grades)
3.) Credits: 1.5 credits that count toward the Second Year elective requirement (or equal to a one-quarter long regular class)
4.) Academic requirements/work load: Working a 6+ hour daily internship shift with a company doing business at the Festival for about 10 days; attending screenings at the Festival (mostly for fun); writing a 5-6 page marketing and distribution plan for a film screened at the Festival (either in competition, out of competition, or screened to buyers) (70% of grade, due July 1); putting together and delivering a 10-15 minute presentation about one of the films and our marketing/distribution plan in a group of 3-4 students (30% of grade, will be done in September when school resumes).
5.) Done in affiliation with: The American Pavilion, a communications and hospitality center at the festival, which matches students with companies for internships and ostensibly provides a variety of other services and perks to student participants (more on this below)
6.) Cost: Around $5000, including the program fee ($3000), airfare ($800-900), and food/beverage/sundry purchases for the two weeks. Darden approved loans for up to $4500, which was not really quite enough to cover everything (food is ridiculously expensive during the Festival....I think they just prey on tourists, which is probably a genius business strategy).

Travel:
The plan was for everyone to depart on May 8 and arrive in Cannes on May 9. I was planning to go late (arrive very early on the morning of May 10) due to the aforementioned wedding. However, thanks to the Icelandic ash cloud, I ended up arriving about 10 hours after I was supposed to and before about 30% of the program participants (and before about 50% of people's luggage).

Days 1-2:
May 9 was supposed to be a "get over your jet lag" kind of day for everyone in the program. For future reference, there were about 150 or so students participating in the American Pavilion's program, the vast majority of whom were undergrads. There were 16 or so Darden students and one girl from NYU-Stern. Since the ash cloud was wreaking havoc on travel plans, May 10, which was supposed to be a day for getting the lay of the land and attending panels, ended up being a "get over your jet lag and hunt down your luggage" kind of day for most people. My classmates who attended the actual scheduled programming of the day unanimously said that I didn't miss anything by not being there.

Day 3:
This was the day when we got our internship assignments. There were also several panel discussions and a tour of the Palais de Festivals, or the main building where the festival screenings and the Marche du Film (film market) are held.

Outside the Palais, with the official festival picture of Juliette Binoche

I was actually pretty excited about my internship assignment - 5 other Darden students, one NYU undergrad, and I were assigned to work for a pretty major American studio (in my ongoing spirit of protecting the innocent, let's just call it "The Studio That Shall Not Be Named"). What I wasn't excited about during this day was the constant "hurry up and wait" routine (we literally spent over an hour just sitting on the steps of the Palais waiting for someone to fetch our festival accreditation badges), the panelists who spoke interminably on random topics that had nothing to do with their advertised theme (we got some guy's random musings on life during the talk entitled "Navigating the Cannes Film Festival" and absolutely no useful information about the Festival), and the relatively patronizing tone of the American Pavilion staff members. Yes, I know wrangling 150+ students is difficult. Yes, I know students often act obnoxious and entitled. But hello, you're maybe five years older than me (which makes you younger than many of my classmates), so please don't talk to me like I'm a child. And definitely don't just yell at all of us. Grrrrr.....

Days 4-12:
From May 12-20, we were basically on our own to do as we pleased, so long as we showed up to our assigned internship shifts. I ended up on the afternoon shift, which meant that from about 2 pm -8 pm I occupied the penthouse offices of The Studio That Shall Not Be Named and made myself available for whatever they needed me to do. This included straightening up the office, organizing RSVPs and guest lists for parties, and running errands. We had been told in advance that we would be doing menial things like running errands, so I really didn't have a problem with that, at least in theory. I was more than OK with fetching office supplies and snacks and whatnot....it was when I got sent out to buy (and then return) a French MacBook (european outlet plug, French keyboard) for somebody who spoke no French and lived in Hong Kong or to track down Tampax and Midol for the executive's personal assistant or to go get the heel fixed on the Studio's VP of Corporate Affairs' shoe that I got a little frustrated. It was like living in "The Devil Wears Prada," but I didn't get to meet Meryl Streep. I also wish that we had had a little more opportunity to actually learn about the film business, but we were basically under orders to stay out of the way of the executive (who apparently doesn't love interns), and there frankly wasn't enough to keep us all busy, so we spent a lot of time watching trailers and reading scripts (there are some really cool films coming out towards the end of this year, just FYI). Several of the more senior Studio employees did periodically take the time to talk to us and answer any questions we had about the business, but it would have been cool to see a distribution negotiation or something like that. Still, all that aside, the internship wasn't too bad. I have some suggestions for how it could be improved, but we'll get to that later.

Literally rolling out the red carpet...

Days 13-15:
Here's a key festival secret: most of the actual "business" is done the first week during the major market session. Then all the important Hollywood-types fly home, leaving the minions....er, I mean interns....free to jaunt off on day trips (read all about those here).

Day 16:
Most of us flew home on May 24, though a couple of my very lucky classmates had planned other European excursions before their internships started.

So, that's the trip in a nut-shell. As described above, it probably doesn't sound too shabby, right? Well, here are my other thoughts on the trip that I really think anyone considering going should know (and don't worry, I have some constructive suggestions for improvement, too, not just complaints). These probably don't sound like major issues, but they could get awfully, awfully annoying when they were all happening at once.

Accomodations

My issue: space concerns and roommate matching
The situation: We were housed in "European efficiency apartments." This didn't sound too bad at the beginning. I have friends who have lived abroad for a protracted period of time in accomodations that are billed exactly the same way, and they were perfectly fine. However, when you cram four people into an apartment that is smaller than my master suite in Charlottesville (which, trust me, is not palatial), you will have problems. There literally was nowhere to lay down our suitcases, and there was not a single drawer (and only limited closet space). I was in a bunk bed with a mattress that was flimsier than my sofa cushions at home. The bathtub had a flexible shower head but no curtain. We didn't get keys to the apartments; instead, there was a lockbox with a combination hooked to the bars over the window outside, and you had to open the lock-box, get out the key, unlock the door, replace the key in the lockbox, enter the apartment, and use the second key inside to lock the door again each and every time anyone entered the apartment. If you were unfortunate enough to be sleeping in the bunkbeds in the front alcove, this meant that any time anyone came or went, you knew about it. However, this all would probably have been bearable if I hadn't had The Roommate From Hell. There were four of us in this apartment - me, my friend Amy, a cool undergrad from Bentley, and The Roommate From Hell. Our first day there, before Amy's luggage and the cool undergrad had even shown up, TRFH comes up to us and asks if she can have friends who are in town for the festival sleep on our floor. Ummmm....hi, there isn't enough room for four people, let alone their luggage, in this apartment. We certainly aren't adding any more. AND, we paid for this, your friends didn't, and the AmPav rules prohibit rommates. Amy and I articulated our concerns to her pretty nicely, though, which earned us a grumpy "Fine, I was just asking your opinion." We thought that issue was over. Wrong. Instead, we ended up with a "squatter" who TRFH periodically snuck into the apartment while Amy and I weren't looking. Super, super annoying. TRFH also regularly flooded the bathroom while showering, and she was also in the annoying habit of handwashing her stockings and undergarments and hanging them in the bathroom each day to dry. Oh, yeah, and she CONSTANTLY turned on the heat to the maximum temperature. It was 70+ degrees outside and there weren't any windows to open. Now, I am not usually a passive agressive person; if you've really ticked me off, I will usually go straight to blatantly aggressive. But something about this girl really drove me up the wall. Maybe it was that she pretended to be unable to speak English and refused to communicate with me and Amy. Maybe it was that she kept trying to stealthily sneak her friend into our apartment. Maybe I just didn't like her. Either way, I started passive aggressively turning off the heat every time I walked into the apartment. I started ignoring her the same way she ignored me. I avoided the apartment basically at all costs. Childish, yes. But I know I wasn't the only one annoyed by her (the remaining roommates really enjoyed commiserating). Oh...and I should also mention that we paid $3000 for the privilege of coming to Cannes, and the weekly rate for each apartment was 400 euro. So that means that per person housing costs were 200 euro for the week. Just keep that in mind for later...
My proposed solution/recommendations for the future: Don't cram four people into those apartments. 2 or 3 MAX would be much better and the cost really shouldn't be a huge issue. Also, don't have undergrads rooming with grad students. We are at different stages in our lives and have different priorities (in other words, I am a grandma and would like to go to bed before 3 am at least sometimes). If I'm going to be crammed into a room with 3 other people, I'd be much happier if they were Darden people.

OK, at least the view from our apartment wasn't too bad...

Tickets to screenings
My issue: handled inefficiently, inequitably, and unprofessionally by AmPav
The situation: When we weren't at work, we were free to do whatever we wanted, including attend screenings. Now, here is the secret to the Festival: if you have a festival badge and an inside ticket connection, you can go see some really cool stuff that is being screened as part of the film market (the Cannes market is one of the biggest film markets each year, which basically means that it is where studios and filmmakers and distributors all get together to buy and sell films and distribution rights, so there are tons and tons and tons of market screenings for buyers, to which you can frequently get invitations or tickets if you know or can figure out whom to ask). Unfortunately, I think it took some of us a really long time to realize that you could go to tons of screenings for cool US films this way. Nobody really told us, and unlike every other Festival-goer with a badge, the American Pavilion kids didn't each get our own book of market screenings. I don't know why this is, but I really wish I'd had it. That being said, the American Pavilion did *try* to get us red carpet tickets to the films in competition and to some of the market films (but again, you had to specifically know which films where showing and where and when in order to even ask them to try). They kept a book where you could sign up for the films you were interested in seeing. While I did get to see a good number of competition films, there were a variety of very frustrating things about this ticket system:
1.) You could sign up at breakfast each morning, and you had three "stars" that you could put down next to the screenings that you *really* wanted to see. Doesn't sound bad, right? Well, the problem with this was that you could theoretically sign up for everything, so there were some people who did this...and then went back through and changed their minds and hemmed and hawed every morning, so it was often a slow, tedious process to wait and sign up. Also, some people had variable work schedules, so you weren't always sure whether or not you should sign up for something because you didn't know if your work schedule would conflict. Aaaaannnnddd.... what we didn't realize at the time was that you were basically rewarded for signing up first, because there were a limited number of tickets for each screening (if the AmPav even got tickets), and while there was a "raffle," that basically meant that if there were five tickets available, the first five people who had written down their names got the tickets. Also, if you "used" one of your stars for a screening for which the AmPav couldn't get tickets, you didn't get that star "back" to use again, you just lost it.
2.) Halfway through the festival, when we'd all wised up about the stupidity of the system and realized that the key was to just sign up for everything really far in advance and then swap a work shift with someone if you had to, they....LOST THE BOOK. And didn't tell anyone. Um, yeah, that was really super and really professional. We all started wondering why we weren't getting tickets to anything any more. Yeah.
3.) They did the daily "raffle" and ticket-awarding at 6 pm. If you worked an evening shift, too bad for you. The Darden crew tried to always have a representative who went and tried to pick up tickets for those people who "won" them, but the AmPav staff was sort of snooty about this whole thing. You needed a signed note authorizing you to pick up someone else's ticket, and half the time, they didn't even do the drawing on time, so somebody had to be willing to go sit around, wait for the drawing, fight to collect tickets, and then hunt you down before the screening. Again, "systems" like this are infuriating for an MBA student.
My proposed solution/recommendations for the future: AmPav should really publish (or otherwise communicate) concrete, helpful information about the ticketing process. They should also provide us all with the copy of the market screening guide that I believe we are entitled to as credentialed attendees. The AmPav ticketing system should be electronic. Run a Google spreadsheet or something so it can be accessed continually, can't get lost, and so that you can actually run a "drawing." Hold the tickets at the actual American Pavilion for pick-up by the recipient (stick a post-it with the person's name on the thing and hold it at the front desk, for crying out loud). Seriously, put an MBA student on your ticketing "operations" problem for 20 minutes and let them fix the thing for you. Sheesh.

One of the billboards for Robin Hood, which most of my Darden classmates got to see. Why didn't I? They ran out of tickets and handed out the last one right under my nose. :-(

Technology
My issue: We were told not to bring computers but they clearly would have been useful. We should have been told to get ourselves French phones/phone numbers prior to our arrival in Cannes, because our employers certainly expected us to have them.
The situation: AmPav told us not to bring computers, so I didn't (one less thing to tote through airports...). However, we needed them at work (thank goodness some of my classmates had brought theirs), they were the best way to get information on the films that were screening (again, because AmPav withheld the standard festival attendee information from us), and I think online ticketing (see above) would solve a lot of problems. Our employers, who were sending us jaunting around town on copious errands, also expected us to have French phones/phone numbers, or at least some way for them to reach us. I signed up for a temporary international plan on my blackberry (Yes, I am addicted, but at least that way I could stay in touch with family/friends while I was gone), but I didn't want to pay 99 cents a minute for somebody from my unpaid internship to call me. Also, without phones, you had no way to track down your Darden classmates to figure out who was going to which screening, where everyone was grabbing drinks, etc.
My proposed solutions/recommendations for the future: Bring a computer. A bunch of us also ended up buying rechargeable prepaid French phones. It would have been much cheaper to do this in the States in advance, and I also learned that I could have signed up for a French number that could have rung on my blackberry. C'est la vie. Now I know. And I have an old-school flip phone with a French number. Aren't I cool.

Money
My issue: We paid a crap-ton of money to AmPav and did not receive anything approximating the value of that money in return
The situation: As I mentioned, we paid a $3000 fee to the AmPav program to participate. In return, they gave us crappy housing (200 euro), shuttles to and from the Nice airport to our crappy housing in Cannes la Bocca (approximately 50 euro value per person), festival badges (rumor is the full festival badges through a company costs around $300; we had apparently watered down versions that didn't come with the free swag or informational materials), access to the American Pavilion tent (whoop-dee-doo!), [semi-stale] breakfast each day (I'll be generous and say they spent $5 per person per day, or about $70 for the whole trip), limited access to tickets [which we could have acquired ourselves if we'd been given the right information], and access to organized panels and speakers that many of us couldn't attend because they conflicted with our work shifts. So, they spent MAYBE $800 on each of us. Even throwing in a generous administrative fee, I still don't understand where at least $1000 of my money paid to AmPav actually went. Plus, I paid for a French phone, bus passes, lunch and dinner, my plane tickets, etc. on top of that. Now, I know all GBEs are expensive. Barcelona wasn't cheap. But at least in Barcelona, I could see where my money was going (very nice hotel, tour guides, admissions fees to museums, etc.) Maybe if I had been planning that trip myself, I wouldn't have spent the moeny the same way, but at least I know where it went. Not so with Cannes....and that is INFURIATING to someone who is living on loans. I feel totally ripped off.
My suggestions/recommendations for the future: I think going to Cannes and working at the festival is cool and a valuable experience, but I think Darden could organize a better program itself without AmPav for much less money. Rent a villa, use the connections we've established with US companies to set up real internships where we actually do useful things, and use those internships to get festival badges. Done and done.

Lest you all think that this is just me going on a tirade again without doing anything productive about it, be aware that AmPav did give us review forms to fill out after the trip...and I said on that form much of what I've said here. Oh, and I warned them that I would be blogging about it....

Done, done, and DONE!!

2010-05-06T01:41:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know I've been MIA again for a while, but I have a good reason...I've been really busy finishing up my first year at Darden. Five minutes ago, at 1:35 am, I sent in my last exam/final (a powerpoint presentation about my plan for managing my summer internship). So, now, I'm DONE!!! I survived First Year!!! Yay!!!

On the sad side, since my next three years will be spent technically "in residence" at the law school, my Darden experience is now basically over. :-( [Not really, but I felt slightly nostalgic a minute ago upon realizing that I'm leaving all my friends now and going over to the "dark side."]

Tomorrow, I need to do some hard-core cleaning, tons of laundry, pack, and leave for my next adventure: a quick stop in DE, up to CT for my cousin's wedding, and then a Sunday evening flight to Cannes, France for an internship/GBE at the Cannes Film Festival. Then it's back to Charlottesville in a couple weeks to start my internship. More details on everything later. I think I may bust out some champagne for myself, and then it's off to bed to rest up for everything on tap tomorrow.

Barcelona GBE - a week in one blog post!

2010-03-28T21:01:00.001-04:00

Now that I've gotten back to the States and have settled into Q4 (and by "have settled into" I mean "have been hit by the Mack truck that is"....though I think maybe they loaded the Q4 Mack truck just slightly less full than those of the prior quarters), it's time to recap the Barcelona GBE and post some pictures! Beware, I'm cramming all you ever wanted to know about the Barcelona GBE into this one post, so go grab a cup of coffee, hit up the restroom, and make sure you're in a comfy chair before starting this....

First, to explain the course:
1.) Course name: Design as Strategy
2.) Professor: Jeanne Liedtka (she is amazing!)
3.) Credits: 1.5 credits that count toward the Second Year elective requirement (or equal to a one-quarter long regular class)
4.) Academic requirements/work load: reading a coursepack of articles on Barcelona, strategy, and design; attending about 12 hours of class and participating in reflection/discussion; attending field trips to numerous design and tourist sites; completing a journal of reflections and insights to be handed in upon return to Charlottesville
5.) Cost: Around $3500, including course fee, airfare, and food/beverage/sundry purchases. You can take out loans to cover these costs.

The trip:
Travel
Most of us flew out Friday from DC, connecting through London. Some of us attempted to do some of our required course readings on the plane or during the connection.

Darden students at Heathrow

We arrived Saturday afternoon, checked in to the hotel (which was very nice and which is located just down the hill from IESE, in the Pedralbes area of the city), and then went in search of paella and sangria at a nearby restaurant. We were apparently super excited by the fact that there were orange trees, so that merited some pictures (which will not be posted here). After eating and a quick trip back to the hotel for cat naps and showers, we rounded up the rest of our classmates and then split into two large groups for dinner and other festivities. I ended up in a group at the Porto Olimpico, or the port area that was built for the 1992 Summer Olympics and that now features a whole bunch of restaurants, bars, and clubs. We had a tasty dinner (paella, pictured below, for those who hadn't been with us earlier in the afternoon and tapas or other tasty morsels for the rest of us), and then ended the night at a couple bars in the area (including one that was doctor/nurse themed. Take note, as this bar will make a repeat appearance in this post). The other group headed to Las Ramblas, where they enjoyed tapas and sangria and other fun stuff.

Paella - yum!

Day 1
On Sunday, we battled jet lag and got up early to head to class. We walked up the hill to IESE together and then basically had the entirety of the school to ourselves (there were a couple learning team-type groups of IESE students meeting together, though - so it's not just a Darden thing!). We talked about design for a couple hours, and then we met up with our first tour guide and boarded a bus to Colonia Guell. Colonia Guell was a textile mill "colony" established by Eusebi Guell, who was a fairly progressive, wealthy Barcelona resident and a patron of architect Antoni Gaudi. The Colonia included not only the mill but also houses for the workers, a school, cooperative shops, and a church. Guell hired Gaudi to design the church for the Colonia, though Gaudi only completed the crypt portion of the church before Guell died and his sons cut off funding. Pictures of the crypt are below.

Gaudi's crypt at Colonia Guell

For those unfamiliar with Gaudi, he is known for several things:
1.) Mosaics (example from the exterior of the crypt below).

Mosaic

2.) "Natural" structures - for instance, the Colonia crypt is built of brick, which has been left exposed rather than being hidden behind stucco or the moral equivalent of sheet rock or anything like that.
3.) Catenary arches - Gaudi actually modelled many of his buildings using inverted chain models, like the replica shown below. When inverted (as reflected in a mirror and shown below), the arches are self-supporting. There's a bunch of physics behind the whole concept that I can't articulate well, but our tour guides and the engineers in our class explained it a bunch of times - basically, the forces exerted by gravity when the chain is upside down are equivalent to the forces exerted by the materials when the arch is standing up.

Hanging model of the planned whole church (only the crypt was built)

"Upright" reflected model

Interior arches in the crypt

Following the trip to Colonia Guell, we took the bus to Park Guell. This was another site where Eusebi Guell hired Gaudi to do the architectural work. The whole property was intended to be a self-contained residential development of sorts, complete with a market square, a park area, and houses. However, now it is basically just a park, as again Gaudi was foiled by the issue of funding and the development was stopped mid-process. At the part, Gaudi focused on tailoring his work to the landscape, rather than terracing the hill and forcing nature to do as he wished.

Viaduct at Park Guell

Plants along the viaduct at Park Guell

GBE'ers walking down alongside the viaduct

Gaudi also briefly lived at Park Guell in this house:

Part of the plan for the development at Park Guell included a main square on top of an open market of sorts:

The ceiling of the marketplace, under the square, includes more of Gaudi's trademark mosaics:

At the front entrance to the Park, Gaudi built two houses that I believe were originally intended to hold either shops or community services (like phones, etc.). I think they look like gingerbread houses:

After we left the Park, folks again rallied to go out, while I succumbed to jet lag and got a nice full night of sleep.

Day 2

On Day 2, we again started with a couple of hours of class at IESE. By the time we were done with class and walked outside to get on the bus, we were stunned to see that it was SNOWING. Seriously, the snow seemed to follow us from Charlottesville to Barcelona. But, it wasn't sticking yet, so we weren't too concerned. We drove to La Sagrada Familia, another incomplete Gaudi work (are you sensing a theme?). He had planned the Sagrada Familia to be the "People's Cathedral" of Barcelona. It is entirely funded by donations; if you pay to go inside and see the museum and the interior, your admission fee funds the construction. Apparently, if you contribute, you are also being forgiven for your sins. While, as a business student, I recognize how ingenious that PR campaign may have been in a nominally catholic country, it still smacks slightly of the days of indulgences to me (go brush up on your European history...). Here's a shot of the front of the cathedral:

Now, the cathedral is still under construction, and they don't intend to have it finished until 2025 (although some estimates extend to 2030 or later). Allegedly, the Pope will consecrate it in November of this year. Gaudi started the construction in 1882, and when he designed it, he planned towers that it would have been physically impossible to build given the state of technology at the time. But, he trusted others to do it. In fact, only one of the four facades of the church was completed during Gaudi's time (the Nativity facade, shown above). The Passion facade, pictured below, was completed by Josep M. Subirachs (starting in 1952, well after Gaudi's death). You can see that it appears dramatically different from the style of the Nativity Facade.

Just take a look at the faces:

Since it was freezing and snowy outside, we were in a rush to get inside, where there is a museum with information about Gaudi, the construction process, and the plans for the cathedral. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, many of the plans/models were destroyed, so the folks working on the cathedral have had to do a lot of re-creating.

One of the workrooms with some models

We also got to go inside the actual cathedral (the museum is in the basement). It was a really odd experience for me, as I don't think I've ever been in an unfinished cathedral before. Thought we arrived during the workers' lunch hour, before we left, we could hear saws and jackhammers and goodness knows what else as they worked. But it was still pretty cool looking:

Then, when we went to leave, this is what greeted us outside:

Yup, a lot more snow, which was accompanied periodically by wind gusting at gale-force speeds. Sideways snow is so much fun (especially when you've planned and packed and dressed for 55-degree temperatures)! When we finally got back onto the bus, we had a couple hours to kill before our scheduled entrance to Casa Mila (La Pedrera), so we decided to drive up a mountain to a cafe where there were allegedly great views of the city. I bet you're thinking, "It's snowing and you are going to drive UP a MOUNTAIN to see VIEWS through the SNOW?" Aren't you? I certainly was. But I was also just along for the ride. So we started the trek up the mountain. About halfway to the top, this is what were were looking at through the bus windows:

Yeah.....about that. We got to the top only to realize that we no longer had time to get off the bus. So we started back down the snowy, icy mountain. Right. Almost 2 hours later, we arrived at Casa Mila (La Pedrera - meaning "the quarry"), which is an apartment building that Gaudi was commissioned to design by Pere Mila i Camps, a really rich developer married to a really rich widow. Mila wanted an obnoxiously extravagant showpiece of a building right on the Passeig de Gracia, so he hired Gaudi.

In 1996, the building was restored, and it now includes an apartment that is set up in the style of the time in which Gaudi lived and a Gaudi museum in the attic. By this point, I was frankly kinda grumpy after being cooped up on the bus, I was over the snow (see below view from a window at Casa Mila - clearly things were worse on the mountain), and I was virtually incensed by the fact that there was a courtyard in Casa Mila that allowed the blustery cold snow to get "inside." Go figure.

The museum in the attic was both cool/creepy. Apparently, there was some "mood" lighting and some equally odd music being piped in. But we can again see Gaudi's trademark arches:

There was also a model of the building, including the really cool stuff Gaudi had put on the roof, which we didn't get to see because of the weather:

I'm sure there was a lot more I could have gotten out of the Casa Mila experience, but as I said, I was grumpy. By the time we'd trekked through traffic to get back to the hotel, I was exhausted, wet, and grumpy, so Julie and I did dinner at the hotel and did some reading for class and fell asleep early. Yup, I'm lame.

Day 3

The next morning, five of us decided to climb up the icy hill to IESE while the rest of the group took cabs. Let's just say that climbing was not a brilliant idea, but we made it. On time, nonetheless. You can read more about the snow escapades and consequences for Barcelona in my post here. After another couple hours of class, which included watching part of the movie Picasso: Magic, Sex & Death (it was for school....so magic is as far as we got....), we got back on the dreaded bus to head to the Picasso Museum (our bus driver was amazing, but we managed to scare off our second tour guide (the first had lost her voice after the first day with us)). The Picasso Museum is located in the Gothic/old city section of Barcelona and features mostly Picasso's early works as opposed to his Cubist masterpieces, which are at places like the Louvre and the Met. I actually have never been a huge Picasso fan, but it was really neat to see his earlier stuff; he was so incredibly talented at such a young age.

After that, we walked through the Gothic area (think quintessential narrow European streets and buildings, which I love) back to our bus for a tour of the city.

Picture from the street outside the Picasso Museum

We visited the Porto Olimpico and the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic....

...we saw the "Face of Barcelona" statue by Roy Lichtenstein...

...and the German Pavilion built by Mies van der Rohe for the International Exposition of 1929.

Apparently, this building was revolutionary for its time, but I think we all just sort of considered it "standard-issue contemporary." :-)

During our city tour, we also had the chance to take in some views of the city from Montjuic...

...and then we returned to the Gothic area of the city to visit the Catedral de Barcelona and some other landmarks.

Cloister in the cathedral

One of the cathedral's residents

A shot of the interior.

Following the city tour, a big group of us grabbed excellent tapas at one of the nearby restaurants.

Day 4

Wednesday was a "class-free" day, and we set out on a all-day field trip to the Dali Museum in Figueras. That was an experience! I am convinced that Dali was on super terrific mind-altering substances. He actually designed this museum himself, which means it is completely absurd. Unlike most museums, there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the layout. Even the exterior is ridiculous:

Yup, those are eggs on the roof, little Oscar figurines over the entrance, traditional "breads" on the exterior, and sinks on the walls of the courtyard. Craaazzzzyyy.

I don't know how many of you like Dali's work, but I personally have never really "gotten" surrealism (which is part of the point, right?). I did think the picture below was cool:

It's a picture of his wife (Gala, who appears in many of his pictures) looking in the mirror. But it's also Abraham Lincoln. Do you see both? How about now:

Dali is also buried in the museum:

After the museum, we wandered around Figueres for a little while, bought really tasty pastries, and then headed to the town of Girona to see the Jewish Quarter and eat lunch.

Outside a church in Figueres

Check out the cows!

Bridge and cathedral in Girona

View down the canal in Girona

After Girona, we drove the Besalu, which is an adorable Gothic fort/city, to see the Jewish baths before heading home.

Besalu - totally beautiful

Some of the girls in front of a church in Besalu - yes, there were an outrageous number of green coats

Part of the bridge in Besalu

When we got back to Barcelona, we went out with Professor Lipson (who had joined us on Monday and was departing on Thursday) to dinner to celebrate SS's 30th bday. We had a delicious Basque meal (we had the restaurant to ourselves), drank delicious wine, and then went out to a disco and then a club at the Porto Olimpico. I think we all ended up getting back to the hotel sometime between 4 am and 6 am.

Day 5

The next day was our "free day" to explore the city on our own (which partially explains why we were all so willing to stay out partying the night before). Julie and I headed to Casa Batllo, another Gaudi building. This was by far my favorite of his works.

Casa Batllo from across the street

He did a lot of cool things there, including this cool bit of the ceiling:

....some cool mosaic work on the exterior:

...and a really neat blue tile effect on the interior courtyard walls that was designed to look like water and also help lighten the inside the of the building:

He also did a lot of work on the top of the building, including mosaic-ing the chimneys and constructing this dragon-like detail and cross:

Don't see the dragon? How about now:

Do you see the dragon's back and scales?

After the leaving the whimsical Casa Batllyo, we walked a couple miles to La Sagrada Familia to see it again without the snow whipping into our faces. On the walk there, we realized that Barcelona doesn't really have "street corners" in the typical sense of the work. Instead of streets intersection at 90-degree angles, there are sort of blunt edges at the "corner" of each block, which means that you get to see cool architecture like this:

I think it really helps brighten the intersections, though it is a little inconvenient if you're a pedestrian trying to cross the street. I guess I'm too used to marching through cities; the extra steps involved in detouring to the crosswalk started to irritate me by the end of our hike.

We didn't pay to go into the Sagrada Familia again, but here are some exterior shots in snow-free daylight:

Detail on one of the towers

Detail of the Nativity Facade

Tree with doves

See, look! A palm tree! In sunshine! This is what Barcelona should look like!

The towers above the Passion Facade

After La Sagrada Familia, we took the Metro to the Gothic area and walked around doing some shopping. We also stopped by the Mercat de Boqueria, a huge market. I wish I had access to a kitchen, because I would have bought a ton of fresh produce and meat to cook!

By the end of the day, I was exhausted (probably from all the fresh air and walking, not to mention the previous night's activities), so I grabbed a sandwich for dinner and fell asleep almost embarassingly early.

Day 6

Friday was the last official day of the GBE. Unfortunately, it was also the day that the Barcelona plague really began to take down members of our group, including my roommate Julie. After a wrap-up session in class, we headed out to explore design through food (think el Bulli and molecular gastronomy...or Marcel on Top Chef). We went to Restaurant Coure, a Barcelona restaurant known for deconstructing food and other inventive stuff (and where the brother-in-law of our tour guide is the chef/proprietor). As an aspiring foodie, I loved it, though some of my less adventuresome classmates were put off by some of the dishes, I think.

We started with a demonstration and talk with the chef about his creative process. Unfortunately, he only spoke Catalan and Spanish, so LW became our default translator (it's always helpful to have a native Spanish speaker on a trip to Spain...).

Above, the chef is making a "deconstructed pizza," the final result of which is here:

He also demonstrated a deconstructed "onion soup," which was the first course that we got to eat:

We also ate (pictured, in order, below) razor clams with some some sort of tasty pesto, ox tail and potatoes, and a passion fruit mousse topped with coconut foam and crystalized mint.

TK, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in London last year, and I really enjoyed it!

After lunch, the GBE was officially over. :-( RH and I did some shopping on the walk back to the hotel (Zara and H&M are still much cooler in Europe), I took a brief nap, checked on my poor sickly roommate, and then a bunch of us headed out to an opera and flamenco performance. It made me really wish I had dancing skills! Then we headed over the the Placa Espana and the Spanish Palace, where they light up the fountains on Friday and Saturday nights and do a Bellagio-style fountain show (though clearly it was done in Barcelona first). It was absolutely beautiful!

RH, me, TK, and TB in front of the fountains

View of the city from the Spanish Palace

We then grabbed tapas and sangria on Las Ramblas (where some of our classmates had befriended a waiter the prior Saturday), hit up a bar (called Cheers, I think, which I recall offended me as a prior Boston resident) and headed back to the Porto Olimpico and the doctor/nurse themed bar (and some others) before calling it a night. All in all, a great day!

Day 7

While the official scheduled events were over, several of us had planned to spend an extra day or two in Barcelona before flying home (Q4 classes didn't start until Tuesday). Although a few more people came down with the plague, Julie seemed largely recovered, and we had planned to stay at a hotel with AM and AA. We quickly discovered that the nice cheap hotel we had booked was actually located way far away in the 'burbs (yeah...Q3 didn't really leave a lot of time for great research!), but we found a computer and located a hotel downtown. After dragging our luggage over there on the Metro (it was a workout!), we grabbed lunch and then headed to Montjuic to go to the Miro museum. If I thought I didn't "get" Dali, I certainly don't "get" Miro...but I'm glad I went to the Museum, because if I hadn't, I always would have felt that I should have. Since we had already taken the funicular up the mountain, we figured, hey, let's take the gondola the rest of the way up! On the way, we ran into three huge Barca fans buying gondola tickets:

AA and the Barca fans

But the views on the ride up the mountain were beautiful, and it was a great ride.

Me, AA and JB (AM was the designated photographer for this shot) with Barcelona in the background

At the top of the mountain is the Castell de Montjuic (a fortress/castle dating to 1640). The castle itself was really cool, and the views were absolutely amazing!

Castell de Montjuic

Next to the courtyard at the center of the castle...I was feeling "artsy"

Me in front of the fortress

Afterward, we took the gondola and funicular back down the mountain and split off from the boys. Julie and I grabbed dinner, walked around the Gothic section of the city again, saw some Barcelonians dancing the sardana outside the Catedral de Barcelona (pictures below), and then headed back to the hotel to rest up for the journey home on Sunday (which took forever but included a nice layover at Heathrow, where we were able to window shop at Tiffany & Co. and actually shop at Harrods; that is one dangerous airport!).

Folks dancing the sardana

Outside the Catedral at night

And now all of you should feel like you've visited Barcelona, too!

Barcelona - update during Day 4

2010-03-10T12:49:00.003-05:00

The last time I posted, we were experiencing the early stages of the worst snowstorm Barcelona has had since 1962. Yes, that's right: around 3 inches (max) of accumulation constitutes the worst snowfall in 45+ years. According to our tour guide on Tuesday (not the one from Sunday, who lost her voice after an afternoon with us, nor the one from Monday, who was apparently freaked out by the snow situation and wouldn't come back), 3000+ Barcelonians spent Monday night in emergency shelters in schools and other public buildings because they could not get home in the snow, and the local politicians are pointing fingers at each other about Barcelona's inability to handle the freak storm. As we GBE'ers spent Monday afternoon trapped on a bus driving up and then immediately back down winding, icy roads on Mount Tibidabo, we had the chance to observe what happens in a city where whole generations have never seen snow:
-middle school students scooped snow off of cars stuck in the traffic jam and hurled it at one another;
-every woman in the city who owns a fur coat dug it out of her closet;
-apartment residents crept out onto balconies to take pictures;
-particularly brilliant local residents attempted to remove the accumulating snow from their driveways by dousing them with water from their garden hoses; and
-dozens of scooter owners walked their immobilized vehicles up slippery hills.

While it was fun to see everyone enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime precipitation, it did put a little bit of a damper on our tourist plans for the day. I'll need to head back to the Sagrada Familia to look at the facades without blustery wind whipping snow into my face, and we were all bussed-out by time we got back to the hotel that night. Yesterday, in the aftermath of the storm, we hiked up a very, very icy hill to IESE (again, hosing down ice and snow is not an effective method of removal) and saw all of the wreckage caused by the storm, including numerous downed trees (including on top of a tour bus), abandoned cars, etc. The most funny part of the morning may have been watching a public works crew carrying what looked like a witch's broom (think branch handle and twig bristles) and a cauldron of sand as they set out to conjure up a solution to the snow curse. No joke.

After a classroom session on Tuesday morning, we again boarded our trusty bus to take a tour of Barcelona, including Porto Olimpico and the Olympic stadium for the 1992 summer games, buildings erected for various World's Fairs, and other important sites. We also visited the Picasso Museum and did a walking tour of the old city area, including the Catedral de Barcelona. Last night, we grabbed tapas and wine and walked down Las Ramblas before taking the metro back to the hotel.

Today, we took a break from class for an all-day field trip to Figueras (to see the Dali museum), Girona (to see the Jewish Quarter), and Besalu (to see the old town and Jewish baths). Again, pictures will follow. We are currently on the bus back to Barcelona, where we will rest up before heading out to dinner and to celebrate SS's 30th bday (which was Monday; we delayed celebrating until we could count on sleeping in the next morning). It should be tons of fun.

Tomorrow is our day off, so I'll need to figure out what to do with myself besides returning to Sagrada Familia. Hopefully, the weather will stay sunny!

Live snow update from Barcelona

2010-03-08T10:31:00.002-05:00

This is a horrible picture from my BlackBerry camera through a bus window as we travel up a windy, snow-covered mountain...but just to share that it is actually snowing (and accumulating) here in Barcelona. I know I am from New England, but I did NOT pack for this!

Darden students featured in NY Times

2010-03-08T09:44:00.002-05:00

Check it out here!

Barcelona - update during Day 2

2010-03-08T06:44:00.001-05:00

Allegedly, it never (or practically never) snows in Barcelona. Well, today it is snowing. Apparently, my memo to Winter either got delayed in Frankfurt (like one of my GBE-mate's flight here) or lost in the translation to Catalan.

Although there have been some "this is why I didn't bid on the Stockholm GBE" rumblings, I think most, if not all, of us are enjoying the trip so far. We've spent 2-3 hours in class each day discussing design and the applicability of design concepts to business strategy, and then during the afternoon yesterday we visited 2 sites designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, Colonia Guell and Park Guell. (Pictures will follow later when I get home and can connect my camera to my laptop.) This afternoon we will be seeing a few more Gaudi sites, including the Sagrada Familia. Each evening we've been heading out in groups for tapas, paella, and sangria, though I opted for an early bedtime last night to finally beat the jet lag.

We just finished lunch at IESE (where we've been using classroom space), and now it is time to catch the bus. Stay tuned for more updates from Barcelona!

Barcelona bound

2010-03-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting at the Dulles airport, waiting with several of my classmates to board a flight to London, where we'll hop on another flight to Barcelona. We're going on one of Darden's several Global Business Experiences (GBE's) that are scheduled during the next week, which is Spring Break for the rest of the Darden community. First Years can bid to go to Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Mexico City, or Buenos Aires, while Second Years, who have a longer break, can go on any of the above trips or to India, China, Bahrain, or Egypt. There is also a GBE trip to Israel after Q4 exams in May, some students are heading to Mumbai this week for a project with Danaher, and a few of us will be getting GBE credit for an internship program at the Cannes Film Festival in May, too. The GBEs offer those of us who do not necessarily want to commit to a whole quarter or semester abroad a great short-term opportunity to travel internationally and learn about business issues in a global context, all while earning the equivalent of one quarter-length class' worth of course credit.

I will be trying to blog via BlackBerry this week, so stay tuned!

I hereby declare Winter to be over

2010-03-02T23:49:00.003-05:00

I'm playing mind games with Winter. Yes, it did snow today in Charlottesville. Yes, I know that Spring doesn't officially start for almost three more weeks. But I have decided to throw my parka in the wash, pack up my hats and scarves, stow the big bad snow shovel, and remove all of my winter pictures from my camera and post some of them here. Therefore, I announce that Winter is over. Do you hear that, weather gods? YOU ARE DONE!!! Mwhahaha!

When I started planning to move to Virginia after 7 years in Providence, RI and Boston, MA (including above-average snow fall each of the last two years...and the average is ~45 inches), everyone said, "Oh, Virginia. It only snows once or twice a year, and it snows MAYBE five or six inches, MAX. Plus, it melts right away." I should have known they were all lying to me when it actually snowed on the day that I came to interview. But anyway...I was expecting snowfall like this, which we got during the first weekend of exams in December:

See, it was kinda rainy and gross, barely sticking to the roads.

You could still see the grass peeking through in Flagler Courtyard!

There were still living plants!

...and Darden hadn't even removed the flower pots!

Yes, well, snow like that would have been all well and good. Then we got 2 feet during the weekend before Christmas. The city, county, and state shut down. More than 48 hours after the storm ended, I left to drive home to Delaware, and I didn't see a completely clear lane of roadway until I got two counties north on Rt. 29. I realized then that Virginians have no idea whatsoever how to deal with snow. OK, maybe that isn't fair. Virginians who have previously lived in New England have a vague idea of how one should properly deal with snow. Most Virginians panic, in the "OH MY GOODNESS!!! It is going to SNOW!!! I have to run to the grocery store immediately and stock up on bread, milk, cat food, snacks, beer, etc., BECAUSE I MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO LEAVE MY HOUSE AGAIN!!!!" sort of way. Do Virginians do proactive things, like salt or sand roadways? No. They do not. In fact, they wait to start plowing or shoveling or doing anything to deal with the snow until there is more than a foot on the ground. I want to start some sort of educational program for the local municipalities. Furthermore, I want to issue a public service announcement to Virginia drivers:

"Attention, Virginia drivers. Please consider the following tips for traveling in snow. First, if you do not have 4-wheel drive and there is more than a foot of snow on the road, DO NOT DRIVE. Second, if you do not know how to drive in snow, DO NOT DRIVE. Even if you do have 4-wheel drive, do not drive if you are going to go either 5 mph or 80 mph in the snow. Neither option is particularly safe. Third, if it snows, please clear the snow off of the top of your car before it hardens into a rock-solid chunk that will go flying off of the back of your vehicle once you start driving, causing considerable consternation to other drivers behind you. Fourth, if you see that your female neighbor has spent an houring shoveling out her car, including hauling shovelsfull of snow to the opposite end of the parking lot so that it does not block anyone else in, DO NOT MOVE YOUR SNOW-COVERED CAR TO HER CLEAR SPOT, leaving your snow-covered spot to ice over; that's just rude. Your adherence to these four tips will make snowy winters far more pleasant for all Virginia residents. Thank you."

Clearly, as a snow-hardened, grizzled New Englander, I was frustrated by the local response. But again, I thought, "Hey, this must be the odd one-off situation that happens once in a blue moon. I've dealt with it, and now I should be able to get through the rest of the winter snow-free." Right? WRONG.

It seemed to snow every single weekend through late January and February (and only on weekends!). I had to cancel numerous trips to DC to visit friends, which meant that I felt snowbound every single weekend, and the cabin fever became ridiculous. My #1 way to spend free time was shoveling out/off my snow-covered car (yeah, with that much snow, those little snow brushes are worthless - see below).

Grocery stores constantly had 30-40 minute check-out lines as every Charlottesvillian panicked, storm after storm. (Seriously, if it snows on Tuesday and you go to the grocery store on Monday to prepare for Snowmageddon, do you really need more food on Thursday in preparation for the Friday storm? How much do you eat?) As my friends and younger sister in DC got day after day off from work, I didn't even get a single stinkin' snow day (the University cancelled classes on one Friday because there was a state of emergency, but Darden had a Reading Day anyway, so there was no incremental benefit to me)! The outrageousness of it all!

However, during the second 2-foot storm, I decided to take the camera out and get some nice pictures of Darden and the central UVa grounds, because I do actually like snow (but I like it more when there is public transportation, when people know how to deal with it, etc.). I thought some of you might enjoy!

The Darden sign.

Saunders Hall.

Close-up of Saunders.

The tree-lined driveway to the faculty parking lot.

Kind of hard to sit on the benches, huh?

Our man, Thomas Jefferson.

Flagler Courtyard and the fountain, looking towards Saunders.

A very, very snowy little courtyard alcove.

I love the contrast of green leaves and snow.

Anyone for lunch outside?

Treacherous stairs.

Abbott Center and Wilkinson Courtyard.

I LOVE snow-covered trees.

Central Grounds, view from Newcomb Hall.

Walking towards the Lawn.

The Rotunda, from the Lawn.

The Episcopal church near the Lawn (St. John's, maybe?).

View of the Rotunda from University Ave. Clearly the undegrads had been sledding. I miss "borrowing" dining hall trays to sled down College Hill in Providence.

The University chapel.

See, wasn't that pretty? Unfortunately, now that I have decreed that winter is over, all we are left with is the big heap of parking lot snow we have dubbed Mt. Barracks:

The Barracks Road Shopping Center people covered it in sand so people would stop sledding. Killjoys. Darden students, ever-inventive and very good at monetizing anything they can, have a bet going as to the day that Mt. Barracks finally melts, and if you are actually still reading this blog post, you must have time to kill, and you should check out the Cold Call Chronicle article about climbing Mt. Barracks.

You know Spring is just around the corner when...

2010-03-02T22:45:00.001-05:00

...LACROSSE SEASON STARTS!!! Yes, I know most people do not get this excited about lacrosse season. However, I am my father's daughter. For those of you who do not know my father, he played lacrosse growing up in Baltimore and all throughout high school and college. He subsequently officiated high school and college games up until having two knee replacement surgeries in the last several years. When my father officiated, my younger sister and I came along to games. During our younger years, we were bored out of our little minds. We used to pray that the high school to which we were dragged also had an affiliated grade school so that there would be a swingset or something to occupy us (shout out to Tatnall, which had by far the most entertaining facilities). But by the time we were older, we actually enjoyed watching the games. We also owned pee-wee sized lacrosse sticks as kids. We played in grade school. I started playing in high school and then ended up with the world's most evil lacrosse coach (long story, but if I had continued to play for her, I am fairly sure I would have ended up in the hospital and my high school would have had a very unpleasant legal situation on their hands), so I quit, and I think my father and I had the single largest fight we've ever had about my quitting. I then "managed" the mens' team. Anyway, my history aside, I like watching lacrosse, and I am particularly excited now that I go to a university with the No. 2 ranked men's lax team and the No. 12 women's team! It doesn't hurt that the lax stadium is a mere 5 minute walk from Darden.

As part of my exam procrastination - er, I mean, studying - regimen this weekend, I went to the men's game against Stoneybrook on Saturday. It was a little chilly, and the fact that there were four-foot mounds of snow surrounding the turf field seemed moderately odd, but it was fun! It was clearly early in the season, so play was a little bit sloppy, but we won, and hopefully I'll have a chance to attend more games this season. I'm very sad that I'll be missing the Syracuse game next week, but I think I'll be able to get over it since I'll be in BARCELONA (more to come on that). In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of my attempts to be a sports photographer (here my father also puts me to shame - since he no longer officiates, he's moved on to photographing high school and college games. He has a fancy schmancy camera and stands on the sidelines. I am technologically challenged, so this is the best I could do from up in the stands with a tiny little Nikon Coolpix.):

Oh, rural life

2010-03-01T16:24:00.001-05:00

Today, after our Decision Analysis exam, Julie and I decided to go see a movie. We figured, hey, we deserve a treat, and how much can you really study for a strategy exam anyway? So...we determined that Valentine's Day was playing at the Carmike, Charlottesville's least glamorous theatre. The movie was scheduled to start at 4:05. We walked in at 4, and there was not a single light on. Thank goodness for Blackberry flashlights. Then, we had numerous false alarms with previews. And the ticket guy came in to accuse me of stealing his pen when I signed my credit card receipt. Maybe now we will actually be able to watch the movie...but not before they blast my eardrums to smithereens. Oy.

Multi-tasking

2010-02-28T23:39:00.001-05:00

Since August, many of the the Second Years have said that Q3 marks a turning point in the first year. By that point, First Years have survived half of the mandatory curriculum, we've ostensibly hit our stride in terms of case preparation, and we allegedy have much more free time. Well, with Q3 classes over and exams starting tomorrow, I'd like to say this: we don't necessarily have more free time; we've just become better b-school multi-taskers. Consider the following evidence:

Yes, that would be my Darden classmates (and co-Section E'ers) at the UVa vs. Duke basketball game studying technical notes for our Decision Analysis exam tomorrow. Wow. There are no words...

...except maybe to say that this somehow represents an equilibrium point of sorts in the self-negotiation between fun and work. It certainly isn't the Pareto Optimal solution.

Those of my classmates who spent the evening studying (whether at the game or at home) will understand my lame joke. To those of you who are coming to Darden next year, be warned that this is what stands ahead of you. To the rest of you, I apologize.

Why I love/miss Brown

2010-02-22T21:12:00.001-05:00

I'm sure most of us at Darden have very fond memories of our undergrad experiences (hey, many of us seem to be trying to relive them on a regular basis every Thursday-Saturday!), but I have to say that I truly loved my time at Brown. This week, I have been constantly reminded of the amazing relationships I was able to form there and the great times I had. In the last 48 hours:
1.) My girlfriends from Brown, who are always there for me no matter how busy they are or how obnoxious I am when in the throes of my "let's complain about how stressful FY is" rants, have come through yet again, telling me exactly what I needed to hear, precisely when I needed to hear it.
2.) A former mock trial teammate was critically injured in a hit-and-run in Brooklyn early Sunday morning. Within hours, friends with whom I haven't spoken in months (and sometimes years) had sent out emails letting everyone know, offering each other support, and planning hospital visits (for those of you who are in any habit of praying, please keep my friend and her family in your prayers).
3.) This morning in the hallway after First Coffee, I ran into a fellow Brown alum who is also a prospective JD/MBA student and we caught up over coffee this afternoon.
4.) Another good friend posted this on Facebook.(For those of you who are confused, see here for the inspiration and here to understand why the video was made.)

Suffice it to say, I'm more than a little nostalgic (and successfully procrastinating when it comes to working on my group's Strategy paper).

If you feel ignored...

2010-02-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who has been sending me emails asking about the Darden FY experience and my JD/MBA application process and current thoughts. For those of you who have questions but haven't emailed, I am more than happy to try to answer them via email or to set up a phone call (just email me to set up an appointment). If you email LegalMBAyhem@gmail.com, your email should make it to me at my Darden email account.

NOTE: If you do not get a response to (or at least an acknowledgement of) your email within 72 hours, GMail has deemed you spam and I have not received your email because it was not forwarded to an address that I check. If that is the case, I sincerely apologize and encourage you to try again - typically, putting "Darden" in the subject line will help you avoid the virtual trash can. To those of you who have fallen victim to this already and think I am just ignoring you, I am not! Despite my posting delinquency, I have been trying to respond to emails in a timely fashion. PLEASE try to send me another email if you still have unanswered questions. :-)

Differences between Darden and UVa Law

2010-02-22T12:36:00.001-05:00

So, over the last couple months, I've gotten several emails regarding the UVa JD/MBA program (I use the term "program" loosely, since it's not a truly integrated program here). Recently, I got a question from a current 1L at the Law School and potential JD/MBA student who wanted to know what I perceived as the major differences between Darden and UVa Law. I thought that sharing my answers here might be helpful to some of the rest of my readers (to whom I sincerely apologize for my blogging delinquency...again). As a disclaimer, the below represents my current perspectives as someone who hasn't finished the First Year (FY) program at Darden and hasn't yet been at the Law School at all. So feel free to take everything with a grain (or handful) of salt.

Differences between Darden and UVa Law:
Darden structures far more of your daily schedule. You will have class from 8 am-1:10 pm every day. You will have learning team each day from 7-9 or 10 pm. Between 1:30 and 3 or so, there will be speakers, company briefings, club meetings, etc. There will also be occasional meetings in the 6-7 pm time slot. That means that on any given day, you have about 3 hours of “free” time during which you not only need to prep cases before learning team, but you’ll also want to do things like try to go to the gym, schedule networking calls, run errands, try to unwind, etc. It is a really crazy schedule, and you don’t have a lot of freedom to adapt it to your personal preferences. For instance, I much prefer to stay up late to get work done, but Darden has forced me to be a morning person and to do most of my academic preparation for the next day during the middle of the afternoon (when all I really want to do is take a nap). Everyone survives this schedule, but it can be frustrating, and I understand that there is significantly more “unstructured” time at the law school during which you can control the way and order in which you get things done on your own terms. Likewise, there is more personal time vs. group preparation at the law school. I think the group work is essential to the Darden learning experience, but it’s different from the “locking yourself away in the library to read” that I understand goes on in law school generally.

The work is just different. While you do spend time reading cases at Darden (which are different from legal cases), you spend much more time building Excel models, crunching numbers, and generally fighting with spreadsheets. It requires a different part of your brain, and if you aren’t used to using Excel, it will just take some time to make the transition to thinking in terms of linked cells instead of well-substantiated arguments. That being said, as the year goes on, there are some actual writing opportunities, albeit short (think 2-6 page papers).

You may feel like you are constantly taking exams. Darden operates on a quarter system, and you will have five 5-hour, take-home, open book, open notes exams back-to-back for a week approximately every 6-7 weeks. Exam week can be both great (you can’t really study THAT much for these exams, and recruiting activities are slightly curtailed, so you have much more free time) and exhausting (25 hours of exams in 5 days). It usually feels both like exams are right around the corner again and that you just finished them. I know law school exams are typically just at the end of the semester and, at least for 1L’s, are given at school and scheduled for Mondays and Thursdays for two weeks, so there’s more ability to pace yourself and maybe focus on one course at a time in terms of studying. Of course, there are good and bad aspects to both schedules, but my point is just that there’s a pretty significant difference.

You should expect to learn from your classmates, not necessarily the faculty. So much of the Darden experience is based on learning from your peers, not just from cases or the professors (who are still absolutely amazing at leading classes and if you have technical or personal issues that require assistance). I can honestly say that I have learned more from what my classmates have shared from their backgrounds and work experiences than I thought would be possible. Because pretty much everyone has worked for at least a few years, there is a tremendous diversity of perspectives and accumulated knowledge, and Darden classrooms and learning team meetings are full of information-sharing opportunities. With case method discussions, the professor facilitates the learning process and shares some of his/her own experiences, but the prof is not the star of the show the way I understand he/she can be in law school.

You take more classes. The required FY curriculum includes the following classes: Operations (3 credits), Marketing (3), Accounting (3), Finance (3), Macroeconomics (3), Decision Analysis (3), Leading Organizations (3), Strategy (1.5), Ethics (1.5), and Managerial Communications (1.5). You also get to pick 3 1.5-credit electives in the 4th quarter, and you can go on a global business experience trip (1.5 credits) over spring break. So you’re trying to absorb a great diversity of subject matter (13+ subjects) over the course of the year, as opposed to the standard Torts, Contracts, Crim Law, Civ Pro, Property, Con Law, and Legal Writing plus a couple electives at the law school. This also means that you’ll have the opportunity to learn from as many as 20 faculty members during your first year at Darden (both cool and unnerving). Also, each quarter (except Q4), you take all your classes in the same room with the same section of ~60 people. Sections get shuffled after Q2. You end up getting really comfortable with the people in your section and the perspectives and backgrounds they bring to the table.

Everything sort of sneakily fits together. Despite the number of classes you take, the First Year curriculum at Darden every now and then really surprises me with how well it fits together. When you learn about hedging against exchange rate exposure in Finance, you also talk about exchange rate and currency risk exposure in GEM (aka Global Economies and Markets, i.e. macroeconomics). You’ll do cases about setting airfare prices in both Decision Analysis and Strategy in the same week. You’ll learn about negotiations in Decision Analysis and then negotiate a merger in Finance. You’ll talk about the connections between sales forecasts in Marketing and production capabilities and defect rates in Operations. You’ll do large “program days” or simulations periodically that enable you to draw together information from various classes in a hands-on way. Darden has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the scheduling of each class and the timing of each assignment so that you can maximize your learning. This interconnectedness is tied to Darden’s focus on the “general management” or “enterprise perspective,” or understanding each aspect of business. Maybe this sort of thing happens at the law school, too, but I’d be surprised if it is as extensive.

Recruiting at Darden is non-stop. I know during the 1L year, everyone is prohibited from contacting firms until the November/December time frame thanks to the ABA. At Darden, recruiting starts before you even arrive on grounds. No joke – you will be encouraged to attend conferences, job fairs, networking events, etc. during the summer. A large chunk of orientation is devoted to Career Discovery Forums, a business etiquette dinner, and networking tips. Companies start showing up on campus in very early September to host briefings and info sessions, and most students will be sucked into the Recruiting cyclone and spit back out (hopefully with an offer). Now, that’s not to say that everyone gets completely caught up in recruiting; some folks have offers to return to their prior employers. If you’ve finished your 1L year and happen to do law school recruiting in August and get an offer that you want to take, you can skip the whole Darden recruiting thing. If you’re focused on business recruiting, on the other hand, expect to spend a lot of time on it. I wish I could say that the JD/MBA degree is hugely appealing to companies, but depending on your background and what you want to do, you may find yourself at a slight disadvantage to your FY peers, who will be available for full-time positions a year or two before us JD/MBA folks.

So, that’s my summary of perceived major differences. There are some other differences, but they are much more minor – e.g., Darden dining options are better, the Darden grounds are slightly more beautiful, the Darden parking is closer to the school but more expensive, I think the Darden faculty offices are easier to find, corporate sponsorship is more apparent at Darden, and you get fewer emails from the Darden Director of Student Affairs every day than you do from the Law School Dean of Students (trust me – I get both sets now).